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What are the 874 Books on the FBI's watch List?

Zorro7 writes "A paid subscription political-economic online newsletter I subscribe to called "Al Martin Raw" last week made a rather startling announcement, from a librarian-standpoint. After summarizing the July 8th Patriot Acts' reaffirmation of the part of the act that allows the feds to snoop on your library book borrowing habits and book-buying habits, he says this: "As it relates to booksellers, it further authorizes the FBI to force booksellers to turn over a list to the FBI of all book titles that they may be selling and all book titles that their customers may have requested. This was the part that was very controversial to librarians and others concerned about the vast power of this; in that it effectively gives government the ability not only to monitor what people read but to use that monitoring system as a basis for declaring people to be seditious or otherwise targeting citizens for special investigation." But hat's nothing: it gets much more interesting. He continues, "It's interesting to note some of the books that are on the FBI's so-called potentially seditious list. They include Presidential historian Dr. Michael Beschloss's book on Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution. That was reported on FSTV, which went through a list of books. Many of the books considered seditious are books that detail citizens' rights and liberties under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights." Then he mentions that Ashcroft said they merely were looking to find people checking out bomb-making books, etc, which, says Martin, "was completely false."

But here's the REALLY interesting, pay dirt quote from the article: "Did you know that there are 874 titles now on the FBI's so-called Watch List under this amendment - and none of those books have anything to do with how to construct a bomb, or how to blow anything up, or how to sabotage anything? They are books which explain your constitutional rights and liberties, your rights under the Bill of Rights as a US citizen, expose the misdeeds of the Bushonian Cabal, and also books that explain certain court precedents in the past, or certain fictional books that reveal so-called classified information regarding illegal covert activities of the US government in the past."

Now I'm a librarian, for many years, and so I decide it would be worthwhile to email Martin to request the source of this list of the 874 books he is referring to above, since I could not find anything via Google. It seems many people who subscribe to his newsletter emailed him the same question. Here's his reply, made in today's newsletter: "People have asked about the books that have been put on the watch list by the FBI, and what I say, is that's why people subscribe to Al Martin Raw.com. Because these 874 titles are classified and therefore are not accessible by Google, which seems to be counted as the lazy man's research these days. Not only that, but because of Al Martin Raw.com's intimate knowledge of government agencies, we can point out the ways in which they attempt to hide information. How I found the information was on a very arcane website maintained by something called The Office of Strategic Analysis, which doesn't even look like a government website. As a matter of fact, it isn't even in the United States -- yet it is. To even get to it, you have to go onto the Office of Information Awareness. Then you have to go into what's called the password or the key code section, wherein you have to enter your government code, which is issued by the FBI; you have to have the number code of the month in order to proceed further. Actually, you can get in -- if you have access to the FBI's security code passbooks, because they're the ones that actually have them printed, which have hundreds and hundreds of codes in them. They're printed every month, and the codes change every month. These are codes that are used to gain entry into, not necessarily restricted government websites, but websites that are frankly arcane, that are shadowy, that don't even look like government websites. (Of course , we do not have such a book)"

Anyway, if anyone has access to the site at "The Office of Strategic Analysis," perhaps you have access to it and share with us the 878 titles on the FBI watch list?

Here's Martin's site, which has biographical information on him - he's a turncoat from the Republicans, and has worked for the feds as well as a stock broker, and he's not a kook, from what I can tell, and his newsletter are very information-rich:

It seems he's gotten somebody in the government very angry, as he says today, "Readers should be advised that the Al Martin Raw general counsel has received a communication from the Department of Justice informing us that the secret National Security Court, contained within the rotted bowels of the Department of Justice, has determined that certain contents of the Al Martin Raw.com website is in violation of Statute 432 of the National Security Acts of 1949-50; and that, in fact, the Department of Justice was undertaking action to block access to AlMartinRaw.com on publicly owned computer terminals." These acts have to do with "sedition." He adds, "This came to my attention, not only by notification from the Department of Justice, but in my weekly radio show with Tony Trupiano, wherein one of my subscribers, a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, informed me that this campus was blocking access to Al Martin Raw.com. I have subsequently become aware that this blocking is system-wide within the University of California, since another subscriber at UC Irvine has also confirmed this fact." "Publically-owned" of course, means libraries.

Very strange; there's no porn or anybody's credit card numbers on his site, yet they block him. Things are getting stranger and strangerâ€¦"

Comments

So if this guy claims that there is a list, but it is classified and he doesn't have access, then how does he claim to know what sorts of titles are on it? Does he offer a citation? For that matter, how does he know of the existence of the list?

You either don't know how to quote terms properly, as is shown in your misquoting the agency name mentioned in another post, or you are hypersentivelly neurotic about religious issues. The link you mentioned above refers to "Chassidic", NOT "Chadist". You ought to develope some competence yourself before you critisize someone else about issues pertinent to competence. And coming from a partly Jewish background myself, I'm not about to cast "aspersions about Jews" for any reason you self-righteous blowhard.

I didn't misquote it, I used the entire name of the actual albeit former government agency not the made up double super secret agency the strange man created.

I think you mean that the latter (OSS) is found many places on the web. The former (OSA) was nowhere to be find in my brief search (although there are a number of Office of Strategic [Policy, Economic, Enviornmental etc] Analysis.

You might wish to see how the comment was moderated. It is evident that others were able to grasp the tenor of the post as it was intended. I choose my words very carefully to make my meaning clear.

If you will note the title of the post is â€œSome people might find your words offensive.â€? Some people also find the word niggardly offensive.

Again if one is to read clearly I suggested in the post that your reference to chaddism might be understood to be a commentaryâ€¦. I did not say I understand it to be a commentary, in fact I knew perfectly well, and I must surmise that those who thought my comment amusing knew perfectly well, that the chaddism you used in your post was a neologism coined after the troubles with the punch card ballots in the previous presidential election.

As to your confusion about my ability to quote terms correctly I would ask that you notice in my posts that your term â€“ chaddism is indeed enclosed in quotation marks and Chadism, the Jewish faction is not. It is clear that they are indeed two different terms and the quotation marks should have made it clear to all readers that the first term was from your posting. Similarly the term Office of Strategic Services was not in quotes and thus not a quote from your original post.

So thank you for calling me incompetent, thank you for calling me hypersentivelly [sic] neurotic, and thank you for calling me a self-righteous blowhard. Those ad hominem attacks and your original post in this thread have allowed me to develop a remarkably clear picture of you. It will save me so much reading in the future.

But so what about the former government agency, what does it have to do with whatever Martin found? It's irrelevant. I doubt Martin made it up, you're simply hurling accusatory speculation. "Office of Strategic Analysi" does apear in various contexts, it seems to be a generic name. Whatever he found is not an agency proper but an office or some sectional name. Countless numbers of web sites, including government sites, in my search experience, often neglect to include the large department or agency it is associated with.

This is to me a matter of Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation, the one that relies on the fewest unfounded assumptions, is most likely right. If the guy's being "coy" about his sources, it seems more likely to me that he just doesn't have any solid information than that he has somehow stumbled onto the edges of a vast, elaborate conspiracy.

The fact that a number of voters in the disputed Florida counties are Jews is well known. Your comment about Florida "chaddism" might be understood as to be a commentary on the voting abilities of Jews, who frequently vote for Democrats.

Chadism is of course a very important part of the Jewish faith. Perhaps reading more about itwould prevent you from casting aspersions about Jews competence to vote.

A good question, but if you have read this guy and hear him on radio, as I have, I suspect he's being deliberately coy and ironic here. People like this always know more than they are willing to share. They live in a shady, legally ambiguous interface, where being completely forthcoming about one's sources would get you or your sources dead or in jail. People who do competitive intelligence work full-time have a taste of this or know all about it. It's a nasty, nasty place outside of the sweeter world of libraryland.

Art Bell is not a quack, he is only denigrated that way by those who have a vested interest in discrediting him because he allows all viewpoints to air and respects the human dignity of his callers and guests. Which I know from having heard his show on occasion, and, yes, that includes a couple of the whack jobs. One of which proclaimed he was going to time travel to prevent the crucifixion or something.

Yeah, and you probably only believe what's in the NYT or Washington Post, or on CBS, Fox, NBC, CNN or ABC, and that George W. Bush won the election fair and square, despite Florida chaddism. My post wasn't to sell the idea as certain and established in a court room sense, it was, if you read it correctly, an effort to see if anyone else has found something to confirm or disconfirm it, as the case might be. I think Blake saw that and was thus willing to post it. Perhaps you ought to find another forum where the expression of out-of-the-box ideas are forbidden if it bothers you enough. And anyway, some of Bell's stuff is quite compelling and worthy of further investigation.

Also, if this guy is merely a kook, as tomeboy avers, then why does the University of California shut down access to his web site? Why bother with this kook - if kook he is - since ther are so many others out there?

Of course there is a secret list of books, heck there is probably a secret list of asparagus recipes that terrorists use too.

The USA PATRIOT Act allows Federal law enforcement officers to request a judge to issue an order (warrant or subpoena) for business records [of course it does not mention bookstores or libraries specifically but the conspiacy theorists seem to feel that those are the only institutions affected]. All requests for business records by Federal law enforcement agencies are under the supervision of the Court. Judges abhor fishing expeditions, as they are intrinsically unfair. I doubt that any FBI agent could convince a judge to give them a warrant to secure a list of all titles sold by a bookstore. Heck they would have more luck finding out if you ever stayed at La Quinta Inns.

It seems to be quite absurd to think the FBI has some way of regularly checking with each and every bookstore in the nation to see if anyone has borrowed or purchased these books. That must be one huge super secret WIFI network. I wonder if they will let me use it so I can stop paying for DSL?

Let me make sure I have this correct:
* Some guy says there is a list of 847 books the FBI says are to be watched.
* Some guy says these books are on a secret list on a secret website accessed with a secret password.
* Some guy says the password is in the secret codebook issued monthly.
* Some guy says he found the list of books on the Office of Strategic Analysis a super secret website.

Wow, it would be much easier to call the Classified information helpline at 710-627-4387 (call the Operator '0' and ask if area code 710 exists, they can't tell you- talk about conspiracy).

In a discussion and post that has NOTHING to with religious and especially a specific Jewish group's identity, you took it upon yourself to obfuscate the issues actually discussed by the use of innuendo, implying I am some sort of f'ing anti-semite. This might have been legitimate IF there was any evidence of a pattern of such anywhere throughout the posts and article. I very innocently made up a word - never ever thinking of the Jewish Hassidic movement, believe me - and your strange response offered observations which was a really a *reading into* the meaning of a term revealing a sinister implication. By sharing your discovery in the *manner* that you did you obviously thought it was more than a mere possibility - all kinds of other things are "possible", why did you pick this one? - you were smearing me by implication. (Who appointed you the etymology or dictionary policeman?) As far as I am concerned, your sneaky debater trick implying the writer (me) is some sort of anti-semite is a worse form of ad hominen, which you started, than anything I said, which is at least direct and honest. Tit for tat. Your declaring you have a "remarkably clear picture" of me implies, along with your other statements here, that you are a person of deep and quickly-acquired convictions and certainties, requiring little evidence or data to support them. Instead of reading me any further, spend more time getting a remarkably clear picture of yourself and how you really operate. Even if it risks eroding some of your certainties.